Interesting development on Darknet. Empire Market, the largest Darknet market, has exit scammed and is moving tens of millions of dollars in bitcoins out of all wallets. This is one of the largest exit scams ever and the total amount may be over 100 million dollars in BTC total.
Conversation
How does an "exit scam" work? Normally, these markets bring together vendors and buyers and set up "escrow" accounts where the buyer puts money in escrow to purchase things. When the order is received, they release the escrow (finalize) and the funds are released to the vendor.
Replying to
There are millions of dollars constantly in escrow in wallets owned by the market. When the market exits, they take the digital currency in all of these wallets and move them out to another wallet to eventually cash out.
1
2
Some of the larger vendors that deal in bulk quantities can easily have hundreds of thousands of dollars in escrow at any time (the largest vendors could have up to a million in escrow at any time).
1